H/t to Speaking Up For Canadian Science.
As noted in a previous post, I’m not super impressed with the ‘War on Science’ branding favoured by a distinct portion of the Canadian science community as I find it reductionist. After all, Canada’s current Conservative government is perfectly happy with certain kinds of science, just not climate science, most of the biological sciences, environmental sciences, … (I imagine you’ve gotten the drift). That said, I am sympathetic (admittedly self-serving) to the concerns over the government’s antipathy towards science communication of all kinds.
The latest news about the movement to change the attitude to many Canadian science efforts comes from a June 16, 2015 article by Fram Dinshaw for the National Observer,
Federal MPs from three opposition parties signed a pledge in support of science-driven policies after recent protests by federal scientists against the Harper government’s cuts to departments and its muzzling of research.
Signing on at the June 16 [2015] press conference by Evidence for Democracy were NDP’s Kennedy Stewart, the official opposition’s science and technology critic, Liberal MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau, and Green Party leader Elizabeth May.
Stewart has already tabled three bills before parliament to restore Ottawa’s scientific capacity, including restoration of the long form census, an ethical code to end muzzling of scientists, and the creation of a parliamentary science officer with the powers of an auditor-general.
…
Evidence for Democracy is pushing back in the run-up to October’s federal election by promoting the implementation of a new government-wide communications policy to ensure that government scientists can speak publicly about their research and creating a new federal science office to advise decision-makers, according to a media release dated June 16.
“Scientists are now supporting this issue publicly,” Dr. Katie Gibbs, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, said. “To my knowledge this is the first time Canadian scientists have mobilized to promote science as a federal election issue. The Pledge invites Parliamentarians and the broader community show their support for public-interest science and evidence-based decision-making.”
“The trends we’ve seen in recent years are deeply troubling to many in the scientific community,” Dr. Scott Findlay, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Ottawa and Evidence for Democracy Board member, said. Trends include, “funding cuts to science, government scientists not being able to speak about their work, and decisions that appear to play fast and loose with scientific evidence.”
You can find Evidence for Democracy’s Science Pledge here.
Science policy flashback
One of my first science policy posts was a January 15, 2010 piece where I tried to find science policies for Canada’s four main political parties (Liberals, New Democrats [NDP], Conservatives, and Greens). The only party that mentioned science policy was the Conservative Party.
I followed up that first post with one dated January 22, 2010 where I tracked down then official ‘science’ critics for each party (Liberals, Marc Garneau; Greens, Frances Coates; and New Democrats, Jim Malloway) and the Ministry of State for Science and Technology (Conservative Member of Parliament, Gary Goodyear) and tried to find something about science on their websites and in their writings. Garneau was the only Member of Parliament to mention science. In fact, he’d written a science policy on his own.
The last election year (2011) produced a few posts on political parties and science policies. I’m particularly fond of my April 18, 2011 post,
It’s only in my dreams or, perhaps, my nightmares that science policy is considered an important issue in a Canadian federal election. Being an election issue can be a two-edged sword, you get more attention but that can work for you and/or against you. On balance, I think it’s better to be considered an election issue than to be ignored and it seems to me that there’s a lot more effort (not from the political parties) this election to put science policy in the limelight.
I posted two followups: April 26, 2011 (it features a visualization of the issues in the 2011 election; science did not rate a placement in the graphic) and April 29, 2011.
Things have changed since those first science policy posts. Some of the changes have been influenced by the international zeitgeist and some by individuals such as Pascal Lapointe and his team members at Agence Science- Presse in Québec, by politicians newly concerned about science issues, and new Canadian science organizations with political outlooks such as Evidence for Democracy and Speak Up For Canadian Science, and, of course, individual scientists themselves.